The school day concluded with the soft, melodic chime that Airis was quickly growing accustomed to.
She bid a temporary farewell to Chloe, who was being whisked away to a fitting for the Spring Gala, and made her way toward the student parking lot.
Instead of the usual private bus, a sleek, jet-black town car was waiting for her near the cherry blossom-lined gates.
With her father overseas, the family's private driver had been instructed to remain at her disposal.
The driver, a stoic, silver-haired man named Arthur, opened the rear door for her.
"Good afternoon, Miss Airis," Arthur said, his voice a low, respectful rumble.
"Straight home to the estate?"
Airis paused, her hand resting on the plush leather of the car door.
She looked out toward the horizon, where the pristine blue sky over Riverdale began to bleed into the hazy, smog-stained gray of the city's lower districts.
"Actually, Arthur," Airis said, her voice soft but firm.
"Take the interstate. I'd like to take a detour through the Southside Industrial District. Just... a scenic drive."
Arthur's professional mask didn't slip, though his eyes betrayed a brief flicker of surprise.
The Southside was no place for a Dover heiress to go sightseeing.
"As you wish, Miss. Please ensure your doors remain locked."
Airis slid into the spacious backseat, the door closing with a heavy, soundproof thud that instantly severed her from the outside world.
The car glided away from Sakura Crest, moving with the silent, predatory grace of high-end engineering.
As they drove, the scenery outside the tinted windows rapidly deteriorated. The manicured lawns and glass pavilions gave way to cracked asphalt, rust-streaked warehouses, and densely packed, dilapidated apartment blocks.
For the twenty-seven-year-old soul inside the seventeen-year-old girl, it was like driving through a museum of her own trauma.
"Take the next left, Arthur," Airis directed smoothly.
"Down Elm Street. Stop near the corner of Building 4."
The town car rolled to a silent halt beside a crumbling brick wall covered in faded graffiti. The tinted windows acted as a perfect one-way mirror.
To anyone on the street, it was just a rich executive's car taking a wrong turn. To Airis, it was a front-row seat to her own past.
She waited. The digital clock on the dashboard read 4:15 PM.
Ten minutes later, a figure appeared, turning the corner and walking toward the apartment building.
It was Lin Ye.
Airis leaned forward, her breath catching slightly in her throat. She pressed her delicate fingers against the cool, dark glass.
He looked different today.
He was still wearing the same cheap, faded jeans and the thin jacket, but the crushing, suffocating aura of despair that usually hung over him like a physical weight was conspicuously absent.
His posture was straighter. The dark, bruised bags under his eyes seemed fractionally lighter.
As he walked, a stray orange tabby cat darted out from an alleyway, meowing loudly.
Usually, Lin Ye would have ignored it, too exhausted to care. But today, he stopped.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out half of a high-grade protein bar—one of the exact items Airis had ordered the night before—broke off a small piece, and tossed it to the cat.
As the cat eagerly devoured the food, a small, genuine smile broke across Lin Ye's face.
It wasn't a wide, blinding grin. It was a quiet, exhausted, but profoundly relieved smile.
The smile of a boy who knew he had a warm, insulated duvet waiting for him upstairs, and a refrigerator stocked with actual food.
Watching that smile, a sharp, sudden ache pierced Airis's chest. It felt like an icy arrow had been driven directly into her heart.
The empathy she felt was absolute and terrifying. Nobody in the universe could possibly understand him better than she did.
She knew the exact texture of the dry crackers he used to force down. She knew the biting cold of the drafts that leaked through those apartment windows.
She knew the crushing, lonely terror of having absolutely no one to rely on.
I am him, she thought, a single, hot tear threatening to spill over her dark lashes. And he is me.
To see her male self suffer so deeply was a unique, metaphysical agony.
But seeing that small, hard-won smile—knowing she was the one who put it there—was a balm to her soul. It validated every choice she had made.
As Lin Ye disappeared into the dark stairwell of Building 4, Airis sank back into the plush leather seat.
Her thoughts inevitably drifted to the origin of that loneliness. Their parents.
In her previous life, Lin Ye had accepted the official narrative without much question: a tragic, catastrophic accident at a chemical processing plant on the edge of the city.
A closed-casket funeral. A modest, quickly depleted insurance payout. He had been fifteen, too consumed by grief and sudden poverty to investigate further.
But now, armed with the clarity of age and the paradigm-shattering reality of the System, Airis found herself re-evaluating her own history.
Their parents had never been normal factory workers. She remembered that now.
They were away for weeks at a time, claiming to be "contract specialists."
They never brought home tools, never smelled of ozone or chemicals, and their hands were always impeccably clean, lacking the callouses of blue-collar labor.
They received strange, encrypted phone calls late at night.
If Systems exist, Airis mused, her sapphire eyes narrowing in the dim light of the backseat, if souls can migrate across time, and golden pills can rewrite human biology... what else exists in this world?
Were they secret agents working for a clandestine government branch?
Or perhaps something more esoteric—supernatural beings operating in the shadows?
The "factory accident" could very well have been a cover-up.
They were likely killed by enemies, silenced before they could finish whatever mission they had been assigned.
It was a chilling thought, but it made an eerie kind of sense. It explained the isolation, the lack of extended family, and the abrupt, cleanly swept nature of their deaths.
If there were dangerous forces that had targeted their parents, blindly interfering with Lin Ye's life could draw their attention right back to him.
Direct contact wasn't just socially risky; it might be lethal.
"I have to be careful," Airis whispered to herself.
She possessed the unbreakable Aegis Bioskin. She was perfectly safe from physical harm. But Lin Ye was completely vulnerable.
She would help him.
She would ensure he never starved again, that his debts were quietly erased, and that his path to a good university was cleared of all financial obstacles.
She would be his shadow, his silent benefactor.
But for now, she had to remain behind the tinted glass.
"Take us home, Arthur," Airis said, her voice steady and resolute, the brief moment of vulnerability locked safely away.
"Right away, Miss Airis."
The town car pulled away from the curb, leaving the grimy streets of the Southside behind.
Airis watched the crumbling apartment building shrink in the rearview mirror.
I will watch over you, she promised the boy she used to be. But I cannot get close. Not yet.
The car sped toward the affluent hills of Riverdale, carrying the indestructible girl back to her slow-paced life, leaving a trail of quiet miracles in her wake.